WHITE INDIAN I WHITE INDIAN IPOKNI WITHIN this buffalo-hide tent, a lodge set somewhat apart from its fellows, the young Indian woman seemed to be preparing for prized company. A small well-tended fire of the clean aspen sticks crackled amid its bed of coals upon the bare space in the lodge center. The thin fumes rose around the kettle suspended by the trois-pieds or three crossed poles, and from the bubbling stew the pleasant steam of meat joined them to seek the vent at the lodge apex ten feet above. Along the circle of the interior (in diameter some twelve feet) pack bales and loose robes were laid, to keep out the draught; the dirt floor was carpeted with dry reeds and with robes; there were two low pallets of robes and furs, upon opposite sides of the fire; utensils of iron and horn and wood hung from the lodge-poles; and so did a few articles of clothing, primitive but of the country and serviceable, It was an interior astonishingly warm, astonishingly comfortable, impervious to weather. All about, the winter of the high Far-Western wilderness had gripped hill and vale and level, deadening them with snowfall after snowfall, and fettering with the hard clutch of a cold meagerly assuaged by the dazzling sun from the intervals of blue. To-day the sky had been overcast, the temperature at zero. Now with early dusk the peaks of a score of lodges here grouped beside the cottonwood course of a stream in the shallow valley floated their smoke pennons upon the still air. Robed or blanketed figures upon various errands emerged from or entered the door flaps. And in a nucleus a trifle segregated there briefly appeared denizens more pronounced of guise-shaggy in hair and beard, in buffalo-fur overshoes, swathings about calves and neck and ears, their loose buckskin shirts belted to confine knife and pistol. For the party of fur-hunters were wintering in with the Crows an amicable arrangement that gave mutual advantage of defense, offense, and relaxations. From the copse of cottonwoods the horse herd, tails tucked in and frames gaunt, groaned and grunted while they snatched at the twigs and rasped upon the bark as though gnawing corn. Hatchets rang upon the ice of the stream and upon the rigid boughs of the fuel supply. In the camp, dogs whined shiveringly, children piped, squaws screeched and chattered. There were guttural orders, and oaths and laughter in English. Distant, a rifle shot punctured the lowering winter eve. Inside this lodge apart the young squaw continued her preparations. She had placed a pair of moccasins, soles to the fire; she turned a pair of buckskin leggins, hung near, to dry them more warmly; she tested with her finger a small vessel of water set beside the coals, and with wooden spoon stirred the stew. A comely girl she was: of short rounded form, of swart countenance, flat but smooth and not unattractive; eyes lustrous black, and Mongol in their lack of white; coarse dead-black hair parted with vermilion and plaited in two thick braids dangling below her waist; full lips over even white teeth, and high cheek-bones surmounting a soft round chin. She was clad in a half-caped doeskin smock tight over the swelling bust, belted with beaded hide, and falling in folds below the knees-whence her embroidered leggins, close to the calf, widened over quilled moccasins upon feet small enough for a child. The hem of cape and skirt was fringed with little bells that tinkled; her coppery cheeks were centered with vermilion; the ends of her two braids were tied with coquettish red flannel. Her person was neat, all the lodge was neat; she was somebody's favorite; and while she moved in a measure jadedly a tolerance recorded in lines visible upon her face-she hummed little monotone in her own tongue. She brightened and turned about, suffused with anticipation. Footsteps crunched the snow beyond the flap lying heavily upon the lodge doorway. The flap was lifted, a man came stooping through, bringing the cold and emanating it after the flap had dropped into place behind him. He filled the lodge with his virile presence: a very Viking of a man, but a Saxon, of blond hair and beard unshorn, of ruddy complexion and blue eyes and generous high-bridged nose, and of length and breadth imposing. His kingly beard was clotted with ice and frost, and the yellow locks upon his shoulders were whitened by snow. His buffalo-fur overshoes were white and armored with ice, his leggins were frozen stiff above the knees. But as though in defiance of the cold he wore upon his body only his fringed buckskin shirt, and it was open at the throat. Without a word the squaw took from him his " twoshoot" rifle and stowed it in a niche against the lodge wall; she took from him his slung powder flask and bullet pouch and buffalo-hide mittens and fur cap; and he sat down, to extend his legs and ungirt farther. She removed his overshoes and helped him pull off his soaked leggins; she brought him the warm water and bathed his feet, she brought him the warmed leggins and the warmed moccasins, she stuffed his stubby blackened pipe and applied a coal to light it. Whereupon, while she now heaped a wooden platter with the stew from the kettle he gravely puffed, watching her with a trace of kindliness in his steady eyes. "No fresh meat," he presently said in Shoshoni dialect -a ready medium of speech, being easy to acquire. 'Maybe a snow-storm coming." 66 "No beaver?" she asked. She beamed. The god her man had addressed her with his lips. 66 One trap lost under the ice. I trap no more." "Maybe catch to-morrow," she said. "But soon ice be very thick." "Yes," said he. "I have brought the traps in." "We wait," she encouraged. "Plenty wood, plenty fire, meat next time. This good place." He laid aside his pipe and ladled into his platter, eating hungrily. Alert to serve his needs she vibrated hither and thither. The water dripped from his beard and hair and shirt, and from the overshoes and the suspended leggins. The flap was lifted again; Indian way, without ceremony, another man entered. He straightened with difficulty, hand to back. 66 'How." "How. Sit and eat." "Minute, now." The reply was querulous and whimsical. "Drat that arrer-head! 'Pears like the only thing to loosen it up 'll be liver o' the Injun that shot it-same |